Hiya.
I`m in Calgary today, and will be in Vancouver by tomorrow. Then it`s off to sunny Australia, which will be amazing.
However, I`m very sad to go, and it`s all thanks to my great friends. I had a blast last Friday at my going-away party at BP`s/The Pump, and it almost makes me wish I wasn`t going... almost. But alas, the ticket is purchased and the bag is packed, so I`m leaving you all to wallow in the sad existence you call your lives.
I`ve posted a few pics of the great time on Friday, so check em out. Notable mentions: Chris getting his face licked by some dude, Sean hitting on everything under 16 within earshot, and Meagan shamelessly throwing herself at me in typical fashion.
Big shout out to Julie and Chris for being the greatest party planners of all time, and to Tara for making it down from S`toon come hell or high-water.
Love you guys! See ya in 6 months.
You`ve just been L-Factored
Ive been in Perth for 2 or 3 days now and am finally getting settled. During the trip over I was up without a wink of sleep for 53 hours straight, and I still feel a little weird from it. "Why didn`t you just sleep on the damn plane, you dumb shit?", you ask... Well, you cynical bastard, let me ask YOU a question instead... Go fornicate yourself, ok? Sunlight following us the entire flight, babies crying, foreigners talking in foreign sleep really wasnt an option. That, and they had about a million sweet movies, so it was either sleep, or watch episodes of The Office, and Wedding Crashers and The 40-Year Old Virgin for the 3rd time. I made my choice and I stand by it.
Anyhew, as long as the trip was, it was cool to finally see a few different places, and experience the different cultures. It was surprising to see how Westernized Seoul and Singapore have become. The airport in Singapore knew how to treat a brotha. There were automatic foot massagers everywhere you looked, and the flight attendants on Singapore air looked like Geishas and were eager to please. They apparently ruvved me rong time.
Ive finally been in an Ocean which is pretty sweet even if it was just the Indian one. My aunties place is actually only about 5 blocks from the Ocean, so its like an 8 minute walk. Theres also a pub on the shore which Im sure Ill be frequenting quite often.
I look for penguin on the menu at each restaurant we visit, but so far nothing. Ive heard its illegal to eat our little tuxedoed friend, but that there might be a black market where I can find the little bastards, so Ill keep you posted on how that turns out.
As always, I miss you guys a crap-load.
Youve been L-factored
Sorry, still don`t have any wild stories involving me getting arrested, or getting a black eye, or anything like that. I haven`t even found a restaurant that serves god-damn penguin yet.
I have, however... eaten Kangaroo, swam in the Ocean, gone rock-climbing (where I am now working part-time), gone to an out-door picnic/movie theatre at the University, hit up a few touristy places, hit the downtown district, hit the markets, learned the rules of a magical game called Cricket, tried several new types of beer, driven on the wrong side of the road, gotten confused on the subway system, and met a few cool people in the meantime.
My auntie and uncle (who shall henceforth be referred to as Rochelle and David) have been showing us a great time in Perth, and I`m beginning to get used to the town.
Rochelle came home from work last night with huge news... she got us jobs at Bank West doing tedious, brainless tasks (i`ll be perfect for it). It won`t be stressful at all, and pays about 25 bucks an hour (approx. 21 or 22 Canadian). I`ve been very worried about my money situation here, but this means that I should be able to afford New Zealand now.
So yeah, now that things are slowing down a little, the next 6 or 7 weeks in Perth will basically be like working back home, but with much more sunlight, much less snow, and a beach to lie on within walking distance.
Oh and also, I`ve been absolutely annihilating in my hockey pools. You`re done Cooner, you`re done!
Miss you, friends and family.
So, I`ve discovered the wonderful world of home-alcohol-delivery... I`ll give you a moment to let what you`ve just read sink in........ Yes, I did in fact just say home-alcohol-delivery. I wake up one morning, go to www.liquorhomedelivery.com.au , place my order, and by the afternoon, I`m sitting on the back porch, sipping on 48 of the freshest bottles of personality juice I`d ever tasted. God bless you Australian law... god bless you.
I went to a house party with some friends this weekend. It was our friend, Heather`s birthday, so her boyfriend had a bunch of us over for a bbq. It was nice to be able to booze with some people my own age for once. Good to have some friends here too (I promise though, they`ll never compare to you guys)
Holy hell, I almost forgot. I also discovered this small fast food chain called Wok In A Box. Sooooo good. You order your noodle dish, or whatever the hell you want, and they cook it in like 2 minutes, put it in a box, and you`re good to go. Not only was the food high in deliciocity, but they make it ready to go likity-split. Fantastic.
Recently, we`ve also visited an aquarium, and a few days later, the Zoo. Hooray for animals! At the Zoo, I made sure to save the penguin exhibit for last, just in case the opportunity to club one and take it home and eat it would arise... the frickin` penguin exhibit was closed for maintenance. You believe that shit. Needless to say, the absence of penguin made me quite angry... and hungry. But I got to see a bunch of other cool animals, and even got to pet m`self a Kangaroo! Hooray!
As for the job at the bank that was supposed to start today... it still may happen, but not for at least another week. Apparently, the chick in charge of hiring`s assistant emailed the job posting out to all employees at the bank. So everyone that got the email now has a son, daughter, cousin, friend, or dog that wants to apply for the job. Soooo, New Zealand might be back off again, but we`ll see. I may just whore myself out to 1,000 fat chicks for 50 bucks each... or 50 really fat chicks for 1,000 bucks each.
So, all is well here in Perth. It seems like every day, we go out and discover a new district of the town, but I think we`ve finally seen most of the cool areas. Still havin` lots of fun.
Oh, and I`m still on a hot streak in my hockey pool, and Adam Coons is still shitting the bed. So at this pace, I just need a day or two more to move into first place... at which point, I really don`t see any other option for Adam than to do the honorable thing... Hara Kiri.
As always, I miss you guys.
Once again, you`ve just been L-Factored.
Wineries, caves, wineries, great food, wineries, two ocean borders, beer breweries lighthouses, wineries, and a 2 km long pier.... and some drinkin` at some wineries.
We went camping near Margaret River last weekend. It`s a small town with nothing but wineries, beer breweries, and caves surrounding the entire area. I ummmm, had fun.
We also went to a lighthouse at Cape Leeuwin that looks over where the Antarctic and Indian Oceans meet. It`s pretty cool cuz you can actually see where they meet because the two currents come together and the white-caps collide. The cave tour was cool too. Some think that stalagmites are god`s gift to limestone formations, but i`m all about the stalactites.
As for the wineries....... sooooo sweet. We went to three different ones (that i can remember) and did some wine testing. Delish! Great views at all the wineries too. The rows and rows of grapes were very cool to see.
The town itself was also great. Lots of small market shops, and great restaurants. Very overpriced due to the rich winos in the region. As for the place we went camping.... it was a farmer`s field converted into campgrounds, so his few animals were behind a fence quite close to us. His animals included some sheep (insert joke about Aussie farmers making passionate love to their sheep here), a goat, some cute little duckies, and a full grown camel. haha, camels have humps.
You`ve been L-factored, you lucky devils.
Well, for the first time since arriving in Australia, I finally feel like a "foreigner"... a refugee, if you will. Now don`t get me wrong, in no way am I professing that the hardships I am currently enduring rival those of the tortured souls that came to be your neighbours and mine by stowing away in the wheel-well of a boeing 747, drifting to our shores floating on a door, or spending countless weeks toiling deep in the bowels of a delapidated cargo ship. I realize their stories will no doubt elicit more tears than mine, I just really think the world needs to know my tale.
The curiosity consumes you, I know. You`re wondering, "what could possibly be happening to Levi in a society so similar to his own, that should cause him to feel as if he doesn`t belong?"
Dry your eyes my friends, for this story has a happy ending. The cause of my forlorn demeanour is actually a good thing. I GOT A GREAT JOB! It`s paying very well, so I`ll be staying in Perth until the first week of April to save up enough cash to get my foreign ass over to New Zealand.
Now you`re all wondering, "ok, ok, so what`s all this talk about feeling like a foreigner then?" Well shut up for a second and I`ll get to that. Much in the tradition of my good friend Toby, when he first planted his feet in the soil of our great land, my job entails duties that are... shall we say... below my skill set. I`m in the photocopy room... Some of you are probably thinking that`s not so bad. Allow me to present my case.
I generally saunter in at about 7:45 am (7:30 if I made it to the bus on time), grab a box full of mortgage papers that are stapled together, spend 3 hours ripping the staples out, spend the next 3 hours photocopying the pieces of paper, then another 2 hours re-stapling them all back together. I was trained by a 17 year old boy who looks like a 14 year old boy (a-la Sean) a week and a half ago, and he still watches over me to make sure I don`t miss a fuckin staple or something. Excuse the cussing.
The thing that really get`s my goat about being in the photocopy room is that the lady who asked the teacher of our training class "why are you spelling Mortgage with a T, is it a special type of Mortgage?", has her own desk......... that`s when it first hit me. I`m the Foreigner.
Anyways, truth of the matter is, I absolutely LOVE THIS JOB!!! ahahah, you know that feeling when you`re soooooo tired that just everything is so damn funny? Oh man, i`m so tired and bored at work, that me and the Chinese guy i work with (who`s actually a really funny guy) just spend the hours throwing things at each other and looking for new things to do to distract us from work. For instance, last week we put 500 sheets in each photocopier and raced em for a $5 bet. We laughed our asses of for about 20 minutes......... That`s not funny. Why were we laughing. God I love my job.
I`m the L-factor.
We went to a wildlife park just outside of Perth last weekend. They didn`t have any penguins... needless to say, I was rather hungry by the end of the trip.
Anyhew, I got to hold a koala which was just oh so cute, as well as hand feed and pet tons of kangaroos, baby deer, ostriches, and some other less significant animals.
Then it happened... I thought to myself, "what kind of a person would I be if I travelled all the way to Australia and didn`t get into at least one boxing match with a kangaroo?". I`d be a pretty SHITTY person, that`s what. So, I spent a half hour or so sizing up the kangaroos at the park, until I found the smallest, weakest looking one. So, I now had the size advantage, all I needed to do now was ensure I had an element of surprise worthy of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. So, I took a handful of food in one hand, and a handful of dirt in the other... I slowly earned his trust by feeding him the food until i finally saw my opening. (I should caution you at this point. The rest of this story is rather graphic). First, I threw the dirt in his eyes, blinding the diminuitive marsupial. What would ensue will no-doubt go down in history as one of the bloodiest kangaroo ass-whippings in history. The element of surprise was achieved... I delivered ground shaking blow after blow before he even realized he was being attacked. His cries and wimpers would do nothing to yield my fury. The epic battle would continue into the night until finally, at the break of dawn, i would emerge victorious. With my foe`s lifeless body in hand, I left the park, set up camp, and barbequed the tastiest damn kangaroo in the history of Australia.
OK, so most of that didn`t actually happen. Alright, none of it happened. Those kangaroos are just so darn cute.
As for the photocopyin` job... uhhh yeah, I`ve been promoted already. What? I`m now an external loans settlement agent. I run around downtown Perth from bank to bank meeting other agents all day. Each meeting has a 15 minute window, and some unforseen problem ALWAYS comes up, so you`re always late for the next meeting, and it`s just a big ball of stress. Aside from that, it`s actually quite fun as it`s a very social job, and I get to meet alot of people.
That`s it for me.
P.S. I`ve been doing quite crappily in my hockey pool since the olympic break, but there`s still plenty of time for me to catch up to Cooner in first place.
Been in Perth for 2 and a half months now, and I`ve had a wonderful time. But it`s time to move on. Tomorrow morning, I will be leaving on a train for Adelaide. The train ride is about 2 days across the outback, then we`ll spend 3 or 4 days in Adelaide and then fly to Auckland, New Zealand.
NEW ZEALAND for a month! I`ll be meeting up with the always charming, Nathan Jesse, and one of his friends, Crystal, whom I am very excited to meet. We`ll be touring the entire island and meeting heaps of other travellers, so there should be a plethora of stories to come.
The choo-choo train should be a cool experience too (gonna try and join the mile-long club).
Bye bye Perth.
I`m the L-factor.
P.S. Between my birthday on Thursday, and my last day of work on Friday, the past few days here have been an absolute blast (kind of a blur, but an absolute blast nonetheless).
Alright, so we travelled from Perth to Adelaide on the train. We crossed the Nullarbor Plain (it`s like a desert). Along the way, we met a couple of very cool europeans (a german girl, and a Finish dude). We had a 2 hour stop in a town called Kalgoorlie which is just a dirty dirty gold-mining town full of nothing but dirty gold-miners and fields upon fields of hookers. Even the staff on the train said that the most famous part about Kalgoorlie was the "ladies of the night".
So, Dore, Birgit (german girl), Juhani (Fin dude), and I all went for a drink at one of the small bars there (Sunday night at about 1 am). It was fun, but the real story starts...... with Ross.
When we left the bar, this 45 year old man, missing his top 4 teeth, comes stumbling out of the bar tripping over himself, screaming profanities at passers-by, calling them C**TS like it`s going out of style. So I stop the gentleman, and inquire "excuse me, speaking of C**TS, do you know where I can find some god-damn hookers in this town". The next hour would prove to be the most interesting time of my life.
"hell yeah, I can take you to some hookers! Let`s go". And with that, Mr. Ross Henry Allen Williams became our Kalgoorlie tour guide. We followed the stumbling bafoon from attraction to attraction. "There`s the police station where I have to sign in every day". Apparently our friend Ross had a slight run-in with the authorities. As it turns out, home-made meth-labs are just as frowned upon in Western Australia as they are in Canada. After getting us lost several times, Ross offered to bring us to his place for some beer. Now, we may be young, but we are not stupid. As such, there was no way in hell we were going to pass up a free beer. So, with an enthusiastic skip in our step, we followed our new friend to his house where it seemed we would almost certainly end up ground up in his freezer.
Ross forgot his key, so he had to wait for one of the other gold-miners to wake up and let him in. So we were greeted by a 350 lb. man wearing less clothes than he should have been. We entered his house, which was sort of like a long hallway with "rooms" that looked more like jail cells on each side of the hall. It was the dirtiest, creepiest place I`ve ever seen, and I wasn`t sure I`d live. So we went in and asked where those beers were.
We took some pictures with him, and he told us to "hang on to those pictures... they`ll be worth alot of money in a week or so". This.... intrigued me, to say the least. "Why`s that Ross?" (at this point, I was thinkin` something along the lines of suicide bomber). But as we drank the delicious beer, Ross regailed us with anecdotes of his life, which shed a little bit of light on his comment. He started out with "I guess I could start with when I killed someone when I was 18". I tried not to laugh, but the situation was just too damn funny not to. It went on from there, "I had a budding motorcycle-racing career, until at 15, my sister told me that she was really my mom, which meant my mom was my grandma...etc. and it shattered my life" After a very creepy 45 minutes or so, we said our tearful goodbyes, and parted ways. As we went out the door, he mumbled something about us saving him from hanging himself that night. So in a way, we`ve done the community of Kalgoorlie a true service by saving the life of one of their own.
It`s impossible to describe how creepy, yet ridiculously funny this entire saga was. We walked back to the train laughing our asses off over what just happened.
We`ve been googling his name since we left. So far, nothing. But we`ll be checking up on our wacky friend fairly often.
Apart from that, Adelaide was cool, and I just got to Auckland (New Zealand) yesterday. Met up with friends from Regina, Nathan Jesse and Crystal Wheeler. Should be a shit-show for the next month. Here we go.
That was you being L-factored.
Hello friends... it`s been awhile since my last entry, as i`ve been quite busy in New Zealand.
Since arriving 3 or 4 weeks ago, i`ve:
skydiven, swam through caves, hiked up a glacier, hiked up a volcano, gone surfing, done some downhill luging (different than the luging we`ve heard of), played a ton of frisbee, and visited a few of the local drinkeries. I met up with an old friend from Regina, Nathan Jesse. And a new friend from Regina, that for some reason i had never met before coming the New Zealand, Crystal Wheeler.
Nathan and I didn`t shave the entire time we were in New Zealand, and by the end of our little friendly competition, we were pretty much the sexiest things to hit this country since... since .... i got nothing.
We`ve had a friggin` blast, met a ton of people (mostly british), but now the New Zealand adventure has come to an end. I`ll be heading back to Australia in a few days, then after OZ, i`m off to Malaysia for a month or so. Might take in Thailand if i have the time.
Anyhew, the pictures will tell a better story than i ever could, so i hope you enjoy.
I`m the L-factor
Quick little update, as frankly I`m tired of writing these things.
I did the east coast in a hurry. Travelled from Cairns to Sydney via bus, stopping at a few beach towns, sailing the Great Barrier Reef, snorkelling, 4x4 ing Fraser Island, partying a bunch, and seeing the sights all along the way.
I leave Sydney tomorrow morning to fly to Singapore, then I`ll head up to Malaysia and see a few things there, then spend a few weeks in Thailand, paying next to nothing for great accomodation, great food, and great women (many of whom aren`t actually women, as i`ve heard).
Just about at the end of my travels. It`s been a blast, and although i wish it could last a lot longer, it`ll be nice to be home and sleep in a real bed, eat some real food, and see my family and friends.